He smiled warmly at me before turning back to the others. “Sandy thinks I’m hilarious. I make him laugh all the time. You know that braying hyena laugh he has when he finds something really funny? He does that with me. Daily.”
“I do not have a braying hyena laugh!”
“You kind of do,” Paul said. “Vince, take his fork before he stabs me with it.”
Ever the dutiful fiancé, Vince stole my fork.
“And we are not having horses and paddleboats for our wedding!” I snapped at Darren. “The fact that you would even suggest a thing obviously means you can’t be left in charge of anything. God, is it so much to ask to get married to someone who understands? Good husbands are so hard to find these days.” And then it hit me what I’d just said and I blanched horribly, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole.
“You’re getting married?” Paul yelped. “You better not do it before me, I swear to god! You are not going to steal my gay wedding rainbow thunder!”
“Steal your what—”
“What the hell?” Corey said, sitting forward. “You just started dating!”
“Way to go, bro,” Vince said, holding out his fist. Darren gave him the appropriate bump back, looking smug. “Lock that shit down.”
“We’re not getting married!” I said, wondering how I’d so quickly lost control of this conversation. “There is no fist-bumping because we’re not getting married. You take that fist bump back.”
“Can’t,” Darren said. “Fist bump already happened. Now we have to get married. It’s the law. I’m locking that shit down.”
“What’s the law?” Santiago asked, appearing out of nowhere like some twinkie demon spawn from the pits of gay hell. He held the drink tray with one arm, posing right near Darren as if my pseudo-boyfriend (fiancé?!) would take him right then and there. For all I knew, he had before. “If it’s that I can touch my toes without bending my knees, then yes. That should be law. Because I can. I can also do this one thing with my tongue where I stick it in—”
“They’re getting married,” Corey said, sounding particularly bitchy. “So maybe take your skank ass somewhere else. Like to the docks. Because you’d work there. As a dock whore.”
“Boom,” Paul said.
Santiago ignored both of them as he set down the tray on an empty table next to us. “Okay, who had the margarita? Just kidding,
I know it was you, Vincent. Like I could forget anything you ask me for.” He picked up the margarita and bent over the table, sticking his ass right in Darren’s face. “Oops,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “Excuse me.”
“You know when you told me about him and I really didn’t believe you?” I asked Paul. “Yeah, you were totally right.”
“It’s like he has no self-awareness,” Paul said. “It’d be admirable if it wasn’t so trashy.”
“And I brought your father’s hot tea,” Santiago said.
“I ordered a margarita that you turned into a Diet Coke,” Paul said.
“Yes,” Santiago said slowly and loudly. “I made this for you. You’re welcome.”
Paul sighed.
“Iced tea for the lonely,” Santiago said, handing Corey a glass.
“How is he a real person?” Corey asked, sounding awed. “Better yet, how does he have a job still?”
“I suck off the owner two times a week,” Santiago said. “Does wonders for my job security. I could suck the filament out of a lightbulb without breaking the glass.”
“Ah, the entrepreneurs of the future,” Paul said. “The world will be in good hands. And people say our generation doesn’t do anything.”
“A vodka Sprite for the fetishized,” he said, handing me my drink.
“I really want to question your taste about everything now,” I said to Darren. “I don’t know if you should be able to make any choices seeing as how he was one of them. No, we should leave all of the decision making up to me from here on out.”
“He said he could do the splits,” Darren grumbled.
“I can do the splits,” I reminded him. “I do them in my show all the time.”